Intended AudienceCollege Audience
Reviews"I heartily welcome the new Broadview Shakespeare edition of The Tempest, edited by Paul Yachnin and JF Bernard... While fully explicating the play's historical context, sources, and afterlife, the editors engage deeply with the play's ethical ambiguities. They reveal The Tempestas a canonical play that speaks powerfully to today's social concerns about justice, memory, revenge, service, freedom, and power. As the editors put it beautifully, 'it is a quality of great works of art that they--unlike the people who make them--grow younger, stronger, more various, and more influential as they grow older.' Long may it be so." -- Gail Kern Paster, Professor Emerita, Folger Shakespeare Library
Table Of ContentAcknowledgements Introduction Shakespeare's Life Shakespeare's Theater William Shakespeare and The Tempest: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text The Tempest Appendix A From Aristotle, Politics(fourth century BCE) Appendix B From Ovid, Metamorphoses(8 CE) Appendix C From Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, The Second Democrate; or, The Just Causes of the War against the Indians(1547) Appendix D From Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) Appendix E From Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Cannibals" (1578-80) Appendix F From William Strachey, A True Reportory of the Wracke(1610) Appendix G From John Dryden and William Davenant, The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island(1670) Works Cited and Select Bibliography
SynopsisThe world that William Shakespeare creates in The Tempesthas many features that make it recognizably like our own. There are bad, self-seeking people; brothers fall out with brothers; people who have power are reluctant to give it up; people fall in love; children love their fathers but want to break free. But there is also a fairy-spirit, music in the very air of the island, and a powerful magician who can command the elements and even, he tells us, bring the dead back to life. Combining reality and magic, Shakespeare creates an uncanny but morally coherent world. This edition features interleaved materials that expand upon allusions in the play and explore elements of its stagecraft. Appendices offer excerpts from Shakespeare's key sources and inspirations, along with historical materials on exploration and colonialism., Combining reality and magic, Shakespeare creates an uncanny but morally coherent world through the The Tempest's genre, design, themes, and characters. This edition features a variety of interleaved materials that expand upon allusions in the play and explore elements of its stagecraft.